The Year in Review at Kickstarter

Darling of the crowdfunders, Kickstarter released its stats for the past year, and there is a lot of data to digest. The total number of projects is more than double from last year, the success rates for funding them is up slightly, and the total dollars pledged is close to a $100 million, which is more than triple what was pledged last year. Overall, more projects were able to meet their funding goals last year than all projects that were launched in 2009. With coverage on NBC’s “Rock Center” news magazine and five of their funded films playing last year at Sundance, clearly they have come into their own.

We wrote about their best of 2010 and also >covered them earlier in the fall .

Some of the projects they highlighted in their year-end blog were last minute fights to funding. Others got funded right off the bat, such as this elegant iPhone Elevation Dock, as you can see from the chart below showing the funding process over time. The TikTok, one of their most famous projects that added a watch band to your iPod Nano, was so popular that it is now being sold in the Apple stores.

The blog post also has links to the favorite pitch videos, some of them are quite amusing and interesting, like this one that publishes a new limited-edition version of Huck Finn that reimages the Jim character as a neutral-sounding robotic character.

But what is most interesting is the funding process from its biggest benefactors According to the company, one individual (the company didn’t release any identities) backed more than 700 projects: that is a lot of donations and a lot of swag. Others in the top ten backed hundreds of projects.